deselect "include in compile" for multiple cards at once

[AJHeins]

I use Scrivener for legal writing. Right now, I’m working on a 60+ page affidavit with over 200 individual paragraphs, each of which is its own little scrivener card. It’s working BEAUTIFULLY for organizing this massive and annoying document, but it’s going to be a real pain when I only want to compile twenty cards out of the whole. I’d love to be able to select a stack of cards (via shift-click, control-click, whatever), then use a right-click menu option to exclude from compile.

Of course, if that’s already available and I’m just not seeing it, please let me know!

[AmberV]

Well first of all, I would suggest a different tool for the job here. That checkbox can certainly be used to do what you’re describing, it’s not a bad way to do it—but it works better for stuff that doesn’t change often (if ever) like say, chapter notes in the middle of your chapter that you will never want to export as a part of the manuscript.

Instead, try selecting your twenty cards in the Binder. Just select the first one, and then Shift-click on the last to select an entire range (Cmd-click to make individual selections). Now bring up the compiler, and in the Contents compile option pane along the top, change the compile group to “Current Selection” (since you have a lot of items, you may need to hit the End key on your keyboard to jump to the bottom of the menu. Now your list should be entirely composed of only those items you had selected.

Note the other options down at the bottom of that pane as well. You can even compile search results and the contents of collections. These are great ways to set up “compile groups” that you use frequently. A collection is much like a saved selection. If you’ve never used one before, then with your items selected, go to the Documents/Add to Collection/New Collection…. You’ll see a new binder tab appear, give it a name, and now you can compile that in the future.

But, to answer your initial query, you can bulk change checkboxes of any kind (just add the Include in Compile column to it, if necessary) in the Outliner by Opt/Alt-clicking on any one of them. This also works in the Contents compile pane. On a Mac, you can also pre-select items in the Outliner and the Opt-click will be constrained to the selection.

[gr]

If the kinds of sub-groupings of documents you might need to custom-compile are categorizable in advance (or fall into a small group of fixed combinations known in advance), then you have additional useful options. At the risk of telling you things you already know, here is my best explanation of how you might use keywording, targetted compiling (and collections) for your purposes:

THE IDEA

Suppose each document had associated with it one or more category terms (assigned to it as keywords).

You can search for docs that have a certain (or certain combo of) keyword(s). Then the Binder only shows those docs, making them easy to select. Then in Compile you can say to compile just the Current Selection.

Also, you can save your keyword search into a smart Collection and keep a little file of these searches, and Compile can be set to just compile the docs in a certain smart collection.

The usefulness of all of this depends on the collections of clauses you need not just being totally ad hoc, and their being a way of categorizing the parts with keywords so you could use them in combo to effectively get the sub-groups you need.

CONTRACT EXAMPLE

To use a simpleminded example, suppose the docs were clauses for a kind of contract that is used over and over, but in different combinations. There are certain Basic clauses that go in every contract, but there are some clauses that get added for a Moderately stricter contract and some others that only go in the Strictest contract. Then there is a section of the contract that comes in three flavors (Chocolate, Cherry, Martini) depending on the case (but independent of the strictness of the contract). There would be different ways to apply a keyword strategy to this situation, but here is one. You tag each different clause with one of the following keyword combinations:

Basic Moderate Strict --for a clause that goes in every contract
Moderate Strict – for a clause that goes only into moderate and strict contracts
Strict – for a clause that goes only into strict contracts
Chocolate
Cherry
Martini

Then, when you want to draw up a Strict Cherry contract, you can do a search in Scriv that has this logic: .

You could compile on the fly from there by selecting the resulting binder items and Compiling the Current Selection. Or you could save that search as a Collection (“Strict Cherry”, we might call it), and then in the future all you need ever do is go to Compile and compile the collection Strict Cherry. (Of course, you can also call up the collection from the binder to review it, etc.). Smart collections and search results are, of course, dynamic, so changing what goes into your standard contracts is just a matter of changing keywords associated with the clauses (or adding some new keyworded docs).

–Greg

[AJHeins]

Thank you! Both suggestions are helpful, and I think will save me a lot of time and aggravation.

[geoffstrout]

Hey guys!
Great software and great conversation!
Can I suggest a feature that fits this conversation?

How about a ‘Visibility’ option for each Text Note, with a visible ‘Eye’ indicator like in graphics programs such as Adobe’s Photoshop.

In Photoshop (and in most graphics programs from other companies) you can simply click a box to ‘Hide’ or ‘Unhide’ an information source. This makes for much easier organization and manipulation of multiple simultaneous sources of information (in this case Layers of visual data).

How about adding a ‘Visibility’ column with an ‘Eye’ icon to indicate the Visibilty of each Text Card in the ‘Binder’ column? Or how about just adding a ‘Visibility’ option in the Context Menu that toggles the ‘Visibility’ status.

You could display the ‘Invisible’ Text Cards Icon and Text with a lighter color/value than the ‘Visible’ ones, making it easy to see at a glance which Text Cards will be included in the final Compiled version and which will be excluded.

I imagine this would allow for an easier workflow while writing.

Consider this hypothetical example:

You are writing your Thesis or Novel but have come up with multiple ideas or revisions for each of your 10 (or more) main ideas. You don’t want to lose that additional information because you might want to later revert or refer to it or potentially reuse it for another purpose. You also don’t want to have to store that information in a separate location because in the future you anticipate that these ideas will be more mentally associated this piece of writing than anything else.

With this ‘visibility’ feature, you just type the multiple ideas onto as many additional Text Cards as you need and make them ‘Invisible’ to the compiler. You can even ‘Nest’ them hierarchically under the currently ‘Visible’ Text Card for easy reference. That way only the ‘Final’ version will be included when you compile, but you still retain all your prior work in case it is needed later.

This would be a game-changer for me! I currently use Scrivener only every now and then. But this feature would motivate me to keep using this software for the bulk of my writing!

I know the feature I’m describing is something used in most graphics software and Scrivener is designed for writers and not visual artists, but where is it written that the two fields can’t learn from one another?

---

And if you want to get complicated, I imagine that you could store that ‘Visibility’ data individually for different ‘Collections’ so that you can have multiple revisions/arrangements of your information simultaneously accessible at any given time. (Long Edit, Short Edit, etc)

[gr]

What you mean by ‘Visibility’ here is just the ‘Include in Compile’ toggle.

That doc setting is available in the Inspector, of course. While I can see some desirability of having it on the contextual menu in the binder, that must compete with the desirability of a hundred other things for that menu! Not sure it would make the cut.

For me a better (and simpler) alternative would be to key command for toggling the compile status. (On the Mac platform on can use the Mac’s system prefs to assign a key command to any menu item. But I was surprised to find that ‘Include in Compile’ does not actually exist on any menu! So, for right now that is not an option.)

Finally, I can definitely see the desirability of having the ‘include in compile’ status of a doc reflected visually in in the Binder. Right now I do this manually – I assign a black Label to such docs to distinguish them.

–Greg

[AmberV]

If one is going to use the checkbox as a compile filter, then it’s probably just easier to do it from the Contents compile option pane, where you do then have a special dedicated column just for it—perhaps not as visually appealing as Photoshop’s eye box but just as functional. It should be noted you can use the select and Opt-click method in the Contents pane, too, for bulk changes.

Like I say though, for most things there are usually better tools for handling what compiles in that particular moment. There isn’t a high degree of accessibility for this feature because it is mainly for stuff that doesn’t change, or that changes only very rarely.

Finally, I can definitely see the desirability of having the ‘include in compile’ status of a doc reflected visually in in the Binder.

Yeah, same here, I have an icon that is just the standard text page with a red ‘X’ in the corner that I use sometimes. We’re thinking of ways to handle this—it’s difficult as icons are already so dynamic, but we have a few ideas we’re playing with.